KERRVILLE, Texas - Jurors in Darlie Routier's capital murder trial watched television news footage Friday of the Rowlett homemaker smiling, singing and spraying Silly String at a graveside
birthday celebration for one of her two slain sons.

A KXAS-TV (NBC5) news crew shot the 20-minute tape eight days after Ms. Routier's sons, 5-year-old Damon and 6-year-old Devon, were fatally stabbed while sleeping in their living room.
The tape included interviews in which Ms. Routier and her husband, Darin Routier, talk about the boys and their feelings of grief.

"Even though we're sad that Devon and Damon aren't here, we try to hang on to what we can to get us through this time," Ms. Routier says on the tape. Later, she adds, "We get sad. We cry a lot. We
get sick. We're very angry."

Ms. Routier also told KXAS reporter Joe Munoz that she believed her sons' killer would not remain free for long.

"I think he's a coward," Ms. Routier says on the tape. "He went after something so innocent that couldn't fight back."

But prosecutors said that the jovial and relaxed nature of the graveside ceremony shows a lack of grief and remorse on Ms. Routier's part.

"In my line of business, I see grieving families all the time," Assistant District Attorney Greg Davis said, "and, trust me, I have never see a quote-unquote victim grieve by going out to a grave
site and cutting up and laughing and shooting Silly String. It's grotesque."

Defense attorneys said the tape simply shows a family trying to cope with its grief.

Attorney Richard Mosty said the defense will show that the celebration began with a prayer ceremony led by a Baptist minister.

Ms. Routier, 27, is accused of fatally stabbing Devon and Damon on June 6. She is standing trial in Damon's death and faces a potential death sentence if convicted. Ms. Routier has said an
intruder broke into the home, stabbed the boys and attacked her before fleeing through a garage window.

Prosecutors played the videotape Friday morning, in the midst of testimony from a woman who once called herself Ms. Routier's best friend. Barbara Jovell told jurors that Ms. Routier was emotionally unsteady in the months before the killings, and had told her of an attempted suicide less than a month before the attack.

On cross-examination, Ms. Jovell called Ms. Routier a good mother who welcomed her sons' neighborhood pals into her home, disciplined her children fairly and made sure her boys were
well-fed and always had the latest toys.

Ms. Jovell told jurors that she met Ms. Routier in 1987, while working with Darin Routier. She told jurors that she eventually went to work for Routier in 1992 at his new electronics testing
firm.

As the new company thrived, Ms. Jovell said, Ms. Routier became more materialistic and devoted more and more time to shopping. Prosecutors introduced bank documents on Friday showing that in addition to their home mortgage, the couple owed monthly payments of more than $800 on a variety of loans. The couple's June 1996 checking account statement showed $68 in their account.

By late 1995, Ms. Jovell told jurors, none of the profits from the company, Testnec Electronics, were being reinvested in new equipment.

"There was nothing more going into Testnec," Ms. Jovell said. "It was all going to Darlie."

Ms. Jovell later acknowledged on cross-examination that Routier had purchased fax machines and a computer for the company's office.

Ms. Jovell said that as the bills mounted and the family business slumped in late 1995, Ms. Routier grew increasingly nervous, depressed and angry. In May 1996, Ms. Jovell said, Ms. Routier told her that she had tried to commit suicide.

She said Ms. Routier told her that she had taken several pills from their wrappers and was preparing to write a note but abandoned the attempt when her husband came home and interrupted her.

"She said that sometimes she felt strange and that things were too much for her," Ms. Jovell told jurors. "She said sometimes she just wanted to end it all."

Defense attorneys had hoped to undermine Ms. Jovell's testimony about the alleged suicide attempt by questioning her about her own history of treatment for depression. Mosty said lawyers wanted to show that Ms. Jovell had projected her own experience with depression onto Ms. Routier.

Visiting State District Judge Mark Tolle did not allow the testimony, saying it was not relevant in deciding whether Ms. Jovell was telling the truth.

In other testimony, Ms. Jovell said that Ms. Routier gave another version of the attack several days after the incident.

In that version, Ms. Routier told the woman that she awoke to find the attacker sitting on top of her, gently stroking her face with a knife blade. Ms. Jovell also told jurors that Ms. Routier,
while still in the hospital for her own knife wounds, fretted that police searching her home would find her sex toys.

"I said, My God, the babies have been killed, you were almost killed,"' Ms. Jovell recalled telling Ms. Routier. "Nobody's going to worry about that." '

Also on Friday, jurors heard testimony from Kathryn Long, a forensic serologist from the Southwestern Institute of Forensic Science.

Ms. Long told jurors that she retrieved blood samples from the kitchen and family room of the Routier home. On cross-examination, she testified that blood evidence on Ms. Routier's nightshirt could have been contaminated when police left the still-damp shirt wadded in a paper bag to keep as evidence.